Last week, I went to Washington D.C. with one goal in mind: to convince our congressional leaders in the Bay Area and California that we need to build bridges toward ending homelessness. I went as a representative of The Salvation Army San Francisco as part of a delegation with the Bay Area Council, a group of corporate, housing, transit, and nonprofit leaders who advocate for better policy in the Bay Area.
We met several members of Congress, including Speaker Emerita Pelosi, Representative Eric Swalwell, Representative Anna Eshoo, Representative Adam Schiff, both California senators, and national policy advisors at the White House. My message? We must diversify the types of housing we provide for people experiencing homelessness. Currently, policy in California determines that to receive state funding, all permanent supportive housing under Housing First must adhere to its policies of low-barrier access and recognize substance use as part of that (Senate Bill 13801380, 2016). In fairness, the bill was passed into law before fentanyl slammed into California like a tsunami after a 10.0 earthquake. It has so saturated our communities, that in San Francisco you can buy fentanyl on the street for as little as $5 for a tenth of a gram. In Sacramento, it’s $3 a pill. As a result of low-barrier housing policy combined with fentanyl, San Francisco is now averaging 37 overdose deaths every month inside its SRO’s, many of which are funded through Housing First. Add to that the cost of building one apartment can range from $500,000 to $1 million per door, you have an unmitigated calamity playing out in all major cities in California. We must pivot.
We must address the drug crisis and the housing crisis at the same time if we are going to make a difference.
How do we pivot? We need to embrace alternative solutions to house the homeless while we all wait for permanent housing to be scaled up because it’s taking years, not months. This means tiny homes, cabins, prefabricated housing, shelters, more drug treatment and detox, and drug-free recovery housing in addition to the existing Project Homekey programs that Gov. Newsom touts as a solution. It’s worth noting that limited data from Homekey housing shows overdose death rates near 10 percent in cities like San Francisco. Is that attrition rate acceptable? Where are the “widely available” services? Do people have to access those services? These are all questions that I brought to the attention of as many members of Congress as I could. These weren’t the only things discussed, but housing in general was a priority for many of our congressional leaders.
In 2023, I made this same trip. Then, top of mind for our leaders was the fentanyl epidemic sweeping our communities. Now, we are piecing it all together. We must address the drug crisis and the housing crisis at the same time if we are going to make a difference. Even if we build out treatment, people still need a place to go afterward, which is why Assembly Bill 2479 was recently introduced by California Assemblyman Matt Haney. This bill would bring California into compliance with the Consolidated Appropriations Act passed in 2022 by Congress. That act reinforced best practices around recovery housing by requiring all states to provide good and adequate recovery (drug-free) housing available for those who want it. If Assembly Bill 2479 passes, 25 percent of Housing First dollars at the state level would be eligible to fund this type of housing — a huge step in the right direction to encourage those struggling with addiction and sometimes also homelessness, to seek treatment.
Our trip to D.C. also included requests for transit funding, the announcement of the electrification of Cal Train, labor’s desire to help build out housing and infrastructure projects, and many other issues including energy stabilization. But, for me personally, this was an opportunity to share the progress The Salvation Army San Francisco has made with its own homeless initiative called The Way Out and to advocate at the federal level for enlarging the solution space for getting the homeless off the street, stabilized, and healthy. Everyone on the street deserves this opportunity. Many have lost the agency to do so themselves and others just don’t know where to go. We can change that through pragmatic solutions that diversify our approaches to homelessness. It starts with slowly reforming our supportive housing policies and recognizing the hard truth: Fentanyl changed the game in California, and if the White House didn’t know it before, they do now.
